Erin Manning. 100 Acres

About

100 Acres is a site-specific installation encompassing the entire gallery, composed of two twenty-five yard cuts of monks cloth that are sewn, embroidered, knotted and tufted. In a refusal of distantism - the belief that the world is given to us in the establishing shot of overview - the work recalls the encounter of the forest as lived through the 3Ecologies Project (3E). 3E engages in para-pedagogies of resistance, fostering techniques for other ways of living and learning at the intersection of the « three ecologies » (social, conceptual, and environmental). 3E’s aim is to give the land back to itself; purchasing it, taking it out of the property market, and preserving it in perpetuity within an extended ecology of stewardship, experimentation and learning.The forest serves as  a speculative garden, an incitement for other ways of touching existence. Deeply engaged with the ProTactile movement of the DeafBlind community, the project asks how else the world calls us to sense and sensing beyond distantism. 

100 Acres continues the project by other means, composing in accompaniment to the relational fields of the forest, giving them an echo in the gallery. Textures of sense generate choreographies relaying the form and force of more-than-human encounter. The ethos is of participation, beyond art as object. Drafted by the artist, the protocol invites audience participation in the project of giving the forest back to itself. The cut reveals the fragility of its weave. The Protocol guides negotiation of the cut and minor repair of the weave: